


This is Not How This Was Supposed to Go

by AndreaDTX



Category: Dark Phoenix (Film), X-Men (Movieverse), X-Men - All Media Types
Genre: Bisexual Erik Lehnsherr, Charles is not the villain, Cherik - Freeform, Coda for Dark Phoenix, Erik Has Feelings, Erik-centric, Fix-It, Grief/Mourning, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Magneto is an Iron Woobie, X-Men: Dark Phoenix (Movie) Spoilers, fight me, sorta - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-09
Updated: 2019-06-15
Packaged: 2020-04-23 13:23:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,576
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19151899
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AndreaDTX/pseuds/AndreaDTX
Summary: Erik had finally found what could be his forever home in Genosha. A place to rest, a family of choice that not only accepts him, but actually looks up to him for who he really is. It was perfect. Until she shows up. In the aftermath, Erik is overcome with how much he's truly lost and turns to an old friend.





	1. Before

**Author's Note:**

> Saw Dark Phoenix yesterday and an idea started brewing. I can't even explain to y'all how much I love Fassbender and McAvoy as Charles and Erik before they were Magneto and Professor X. The loss of these two actors and potentially this character dynamic is the only thing that makes me sad about Marvel getting the X-men back.

Potatoes, corn, beans, squash, and eggs. Those are the main five foods needed to survive. Nutritious, versatile, easily-stored, resistant to drought and any other flights fancy or fits of rage man or weather might have. Erik knows this well. After all, this is not the first time he’s been a part of a people who only survive by hiding at the edges of society.

But Genosha, he hopes, will be different. This time the government itself had willingly given the land and left him to his own devices, a gift for his role in stopping Apocalypse, thankfully unaware of how belated that decision had come. With a place to settle, he'd searched for his mutant brothers and sisters who needed refuge the most, the ones Charles would never seek out, the ones who weren’t bright and shiny with potential, who were instead jaded and cynical, rusted and bent.

“I fed the chickens and reinforced the wires around their coop,” Ariki says as he nears where Erik is de-bugging rows of potatoes.

Ariki doesn’t look the part of a farmer, his appearance more suited to a biker or a gangster or some other type of ruffian, his long braids nearly sentient and capable of killing a man yards away at his command, if his lethal martial arts skill didn’t dispatch them first.

“Good,” Erik says, plucking off a potato beetle and dropping it into his bucket of water and liquid dish soap before checking the underside of the leaf for beetle eggs. “Did you collect their eggs?”

“Of course,” Ariki replies, kneeling to join Erik’s effort. “Already took them to Lash to cook. Just so you know though, a few of the hens have been shedding feathers the last few days. Patchy instead of all over.”

“Shit,” he sighs. That could mean they’re getting sick. They definitely need to get ahead of that. The problem is finding someone sympathetic enough to their cause to come out to the commune without bringing trouble with them. Erik and his mutants weren't treated to the same adoring admiration that some of the more 'heroic' mutants now enjoyed. He and his ragtag group were begrudgingly left alone with weary caution.

“I’ll put out feelers for a vet. Keep an eye on it and let me know if it looks like it’s getting worse.”

“Yes, sir,” Ariki replies. Without Erik having to ask, he takes over the debugging.

Erik rises to his feet, dusting his hands off. He picks up his tub of potatoes and carries it towards the root cellar, stopping to check in with each group he passes.

“Corn's looking promising,” Rayon chirps at him as she and her boyfriend repair the electric wires and netting that the raccoons have been going at in their attempts to get to the healthy green stalks.

"Glad to hear it," he calls back.

He continues, past the plot where Phillipa and Lance are using their seismic tremor powers to churn up rocky soil in hopes of being able to plant tomatoes. It would be a luxury but fresh tomatoes in salads or for paste or soups would be nice so he does nothing to discourage their efforts.

At the fire-pits, Simon is using his Pyro powers to heat the coals Lash will need to prepare lunch. Next to him, Rita's multiple sets of arms seem to fly, shucking corn, chopping potatoes, and dicing onions all at once. They both wave as he passes and he nods in greeting.

A further ways down, Martin is hard at work in his own plot. Despite having the ability move fast enough to create sonic boom, he's painstakingly weeding wheat at a normal pace. He says doing things like a ‘normie’ relaxes him. Erik doesn’t really understand it. He likes using his powers. Walking across a room to pick up something whose metal components would’ve allowed him to float it his way reminds him of his days of having to hide, fearful that the wrong humans might once again discover what he could do. But then again, he’s currently toting a metal tub rather than floating it to its destination so maybe Martin is on to something.

To each their own.

“How goes it?” he asks Martin.

“By fall, we’ll be swimming in wheat,” he says with a wide grin, dirt smudging his forehead. “Then we'll have all the flour we can handle. Cakes, cookies,  _bread_... Think of the sandwiches, man!”

Erik chuckles, unable to resist the other man’s glee. “Keep at it then.”

He reaches the root cellar and uses the metal latches to swing the door open. Clumping down the steps, he mentally tugs at the chain connected to the ceiling light. The bulb blazes to life, revealing shelf after shelf, table after table of organic, raw ingredients. The bounty of their labors. The sight alone soothes that small, anxious part of him that remembers the gnawing, aching hunger that stretched for days in Auschwitz.

Never again.

He uses his mind to float the tub to the lower shelves, their organization system dictating that older food be stored at eye level while fresher stuff goes at the bottom, everything rotating up as food is consumed and more is stored to avoid food spoiling out of sight and out of mind.

Satisfied, he emerges from the root cellar and heads over to the two-floor building where he’s been bunking. As the leader of the compound, he has an entire floor to himself. He’s never really had a space that was all his own. Before the… before the camps, his family hadn’t been well off. He shared a room with his ema and abba in a house they lived in with two other families. When the Nazi monsters masquerading as humans took power, his abba had been immediately sent off to the death camps like all the other able-bodied men. Because he was a child, he'd been allowed to stay with his ema, crammed in with dozens of other terrified neighbors. Until Shaw had discovered his powers…

It’s not until he hears the rattling of nails and scrap metal on his dresser that he realizes he’s allowed that old anger to take hold of him. He takes a deep breath, tries to calm himself. He’s had his revenge. Continuing to lash out now only gives Shaw control over him from the grave.

He takes one deep breath after another, the way he’s been practicing since founding Genosha almost ten years ago. He nearly has a handle on it when he feels a soft but recognizable poke at his mind. Freezing, he carefully blanks his thoughts and waits for the familiar refrain. But it doesn’t come.

Instead, he gets a rougher jab that makes him wince before a mental image is shoved into his mind. This time from Selene, one of his sentries. He focuses on what she’s showing him. An outsider. Young, in her early twenties, red hair, pale, disheveled, clothing stained with blood. One of Charles’ many precious ducklings. What could she possibly want here?

With one final deep breath, he floats out to meet her.


	2. During

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: Here be spoilers if you haven't seen Dark Phoenix yet.

It doesn’t take long for it all to turn to shit. Within hours of Jean showing up, the U.S. military follows. Funny how that always seems to happen whenever Erik makes the mistake of trying to help the ‘good guys.’

Hopefully, he bought them some grace by saving those soldiers in the helicopter. Maybe they’ll go back and tell their superiors that Jean was acting on her own, that he and his group had been unaware of what she’d done. For once, Erik had gone against a fellow mutant to save humans who’d no doubt been prepared to kill them all.

With a disgusted sigh, he looks around. Corn and wheat have been blown out of the ground by their roots. There’s a smoldering helicopter where their tomato plot would’ve been. He doesn’t even have to check to know that’s a pipedream now. He can smell the diesel fuel from here and undoubtedly it’s soaking the ground under the destroyed metal bird. The blades from the surviving chopper had cut a swatch through both the potato and the squash plots, likely destroying most if not all of this year’s harvest. In a few short minutes, they’d gone from having an ample surplus to needing to carefully consider how to use their stores to make sure they would survive the winter.

He clenches his teeth. With a flick of a hand he flings a random bolt that landed at his foot across the yard towards the helicopter it probably came from.

“Let’s get this mess cleaned up,” he barks, knowing the forceful command will ease some of the anxiety of his followers who just want a sign of stable leadership after such a shit show.

He turns to Selene. “Send out a message, make sure we get a heads up at the first hint that they might be preparing a convoy to come out here for any reason. Regardless of the reason, kill, capture, interrogate, I want to know.”

She nods sharply before turning to help the others.

When all eyes have finally turned away, he sighs. An exhausted expulsion of breath. He doesn’t want to run. He’s tired of running, tired of starting over, tired of working himself half to death only to have his dream snatched away just as he’s beginning to trust that it’s really his to keep. No. He won’t run. So they’ll need all the forewarning they can get if the girl has already turned public sentiment against them. If there’s an outcry for revenge, the commune with the outlaws and stragglers will be hit long before the school full of kids, regardless of where the girl actually came from.

He’s working to remove all the stray helicopter parts when Selene shoves another mental image into his head. A jet headed their way. He tenses. He’s only ever seen one jet move that way. While he waits for it to approach and land, he continues to mentally toss chopper parts to the heap at the edge of the compound. Really, Erik doesn’t want him here. This is Erik’s haven the way the mansion is Charles’. But if the girl really has done what the soldiers said, this is Charles’ mess to clean up, both literally and metaphorically.

When the jet lands and powers down, Erik turns and approaches, watching as the hatch lowers, waiting for the line of navy and gold suits to pour out. But only one person emerges.

“Hank? Where are the others? Charles?” he asks, not sure what to make of the feeling akin to disappointment he feels swirling in his stomach.

Hank, standing in his human form, shakes his head. “No others. Just me.”

Erik frowns. “Well, what are you doing here alone?”

Hank pauses for a moment, looking sad, maybe even hurt. Probably shocked that one of the amazing X-Men could go bad.

“I’m looking for Jean. I need you to help me find her.”

Erik scoffs. Looks around at the debris littering his home. “Yeah, no. I’m not really interested in finding her.”

Hank’s lips press into a thin line. “You have to. It’s for Mystique.”

The name makes his heart skip a beat, the way they sometimes describe in songs. He and Raven have had an on-again-off-again, will-they-won’t-they type of relationship. Erik genuinely likes the girl, but Raven has always been too conflicted for them to have a relationship. It’s really hard to love someone who hasn’t managed to find a way to love herself. Add into that Raven’s ongoing childhood crush on Charles, who's never seen her as more than a younger sister, and, well… They were just never meant to be.

“Did she send you?” he asks. Maybe he’ll do it anyway. Against his better judgment. If she's the one asking.

Hanks’s mouth drops open and his skin goes pale as milk. “You… You don’t know?”

“Don’t know what?” he asks, his heart beginning to race. He doesn’t need Charles’ gift to pick up that something's really wrong. But even as he asks the question, his mind connects the dots. The blood on Jean’s shirt, her blubbering on about hurting the people she loves the most.

“Hank?” he asks, hoping he’s drawn the wrong conclusion.

Hank swallows hard. “Raven’s dead. Jean killed her.”

It’s a punch to the gut, a kick in the balls, a slap to the face, and every other painful sensation he’s ever experienced all at once. His eyes burn and the unpleasant tickle of a tear trickles down his face. Raven was his friend. She believed in him. He’d taught her to believe in herself.

The metal shingles on the shack behind him clatter loudly for a brief moment before he's able to calm himself, to focus.

He swallows against the knot in his throat. “If I find her, I’ll kill her.”

Hank gives him with a determined nod.

“I know,” he says before turning to re-board the jet.

Erik makes to follow when he feels a prod, a mental tug, an attempt to pull him towards a calm he knows he himself does not feel. With a grit of his teeth and an aggravated huff, he turns back, goes to his room. Once there, he pulls a chest from underneath his bed. The prod grows firmer, more insistent, creating a dizzying wave of queasiness as his heartbeat races and slows, jerking between the adrenaline of his own feelings and the oxytocin of the artificial calm the mental intrusion is attempting to force on him.

Throwing the chest open, he reverently pulls away the cloth that hid the item within.

His helmet, dull with age and disuse.

A final echo pulses through his head.

_Please, don’t._

He slides the helmet on.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> While the movie-verse waffles between whether or not Erik and Raven have truly romantic feelings for each other, I interpret their relationship as a less platonic version of the Raven & Charles relationship but never consummated. They flirt because they find each other a safe target but neither truly wants to act on it. Maybe in another life where they hadn't already been horribly traumatized by their respective childhoods...


	3. After

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Meant to have this out much sooner, but we had some wild weather in my neck of the woods. I ended up displaced with limited power and internet access for most of the week. Needless to say, I wasn't feeling super creative. 
> 
> There is a minor warning for this chapter. Nothing wildly triggering or anything, but I included it in the notes at the end in order to avoid spoiling the plot, so check it out before reading if you want to be extra sure.

The girl is dead.

Not by his hand, but rather through her own choice. Ultimately, she’d sacrificed herself to save her friends.

Charles would be proud.

Erik still isn’t sure how he feels about the whole thing.

Before her demise, he’d fought to save her. Sitting in that military convoy train, stinging from several near-death experiences, he’d realized that his anger had once again gotten the best of him and blinded him to the enormity of the situation. The mere fact that both the humans and the alien’s wanted to control the girl and her power so badly should have clued him in. Would have had he not been so blinded by his own rage. He’s almost glad they’d been restrained by power dampeners when he’d come to the realization. Charles’ inability to use his powers of persuasion as he apologized means that Eric’s change of heart had been purely of his own volition. That bit of clarity, that space to stop and think calmly, had been enough to allow him to actually listen to Charles and the others, including Hank, insist that Raven would want him to help Jean, cementing his decision.

Afterwards, with nothing to say to Charles and no desire to return to the mansion Raven had loved so much, Erik returns to Genosha, his refuge.

For a few days, he tries to carry on. To gather what remains of the Brotherhood and continue living. But an unease remains, permeating their home, their group. The loss of Selene and her gift of mental projection leaves them at odds. The land feels unsafe without her helping them communicate wordlessly and instantaneously, the uncertainty sitting under their skins like fur that’s been rubbed the wrong way. If Erik were a better leader, in a better headspace, he’d gather them, soothe their fears with a rousing speech about unity and triumphing over adversity.

But he’s never been that man.

Instead, he gives up and simply stays in bed. After attempting to roust him several times only to be rewarded with the ominous threat of metal clattering against the walls, they leave him be. And he wallows. Pitifully. Thinking, again, of what he’s lost, of whom he’s lost.

It’s painful, not having Raven around after a life-threatening battle. She’d been there every time, as they’d struggled to pick up the pieces of their shattered trust, in humanity, in each other. After their attempt to work with the CIA in the sixties ended in betrayal, she’d sided with him, mutant and proud. They’d worked and lived together until, without warning, the military had cracked down aggressively, kidnapping mutants to interrogate and experiment on, forcing Erik’s group to disband and hide for their own safety. Later, in the seventies, Erik’s fear got the best of him and he’d tried to kill her after being warned that her unique mutation would lead to the genocidal extinction of their kind, forcing her to protect humans for her own survival and to side with Charles for safety. Finally, in the eighties, he’d been so hurt by the senseless murder of his wife, his daughter… There’d barely been room for either member of his makeshift family even as they’d begged him to come back, to stay with them.

And now… Now, there’s no later. There’s no certainty that their paths will cross again to allow them to smooth out whatever disagreements or hurt feelings still separated them.

A single, silent tear slides down his face. Followed by a deluge.

It takes seven days, seven nights.

He comes to a decision.

He exits his quarters with little more than a duffle bag over his shoulder. Several people look up, surprised then relieved to see him. He does not acknowledge their looks. He searches for his second in command.

“Ariki?”

“Yes, sir,” the man says, setting aside the tub of metal shards he’d been collecting.

“I need you to take watch,” Erik says, the urge in him growing more pressing as he talks. “I’m going to find some… something.”

Ariki looks unsure for a fleeting second before he nods sharply. “I’ll hold down the fort.”

“Good man,” Erik says, heading down the trail, mind already focused on his destination.

“I hope you find what you’re looking for, sir,” Ariki calls.

* * *

He tries the mansion first.

The first shock is the placard.

_The Jean Grey School of Higher Learning._

It takes everything in him not to warp the damn thing. First, Raven’s _life_ and now Charles’ _legacy_?

Quietly fuming, he makes his way inside, given a wide berth by the young students who only know him by reputation. Ignoring them, he finds Hank in Charles’ Headmaster study.

“Where is he?” Erik asks without ceremony.

Hank looks up from the letter he’d been writing. He puts down his pen, folds his glasses.

“Erik…”

“Where. Is. He?” Erik demands, not interesting in the myriad emotions he can see all over Hanks’ furry, blue face. Hank pulled him in once with his grief and anger, nearly sank him. He refuses to allow it a second time.

Hank sighs heavily. “I don’t know. Europe, maybe. _Probably_.”

Erik frowns, irritated. “Charles just walked away? Without telling you where to? Left his kids, his school, and didn’t tell you where he was going?”

Hank’s eyes narrow sharply. “It’s not his school and they’re not his kids. Not anymore.”

Erik’s frown deepens. “Not his-“

Before he can get the question out, a wisp of blue smoke at the edge of his peripheral catches his attention before it solidifies into a young man. The transporter.

Standing just outside of what is apparently now _Hank’s_ office door, Nightcrawler frantically motions for Erik to join him.

Erik considers it for a moment before mentally acquiescing. He turns back to Hank. “Fine. I’ll find him on my own.”

“Best of luck,” Hank says sharply and turns back to his letter, a clear dismissal. Erik’s half tempted to put the letter opener on Charles’ desk to good use.

“What do you want?” he barks once outside of the office.

“I know where the professor went,” the petite man says in heavily-accented, trembling voice.

“Where?”

“France,” he mumbles, wringing his webbed hands nervously.

“ _Where_ in France?” Erik prompts, his patience growing thinner by the minute.

“Marseille,” the man says. Then he looks away. “He said… he said that if we need him, _really, really_ need him, to just think his name really hard and he’d hear. But he’s been gone so long and the others… they don’t speak of him anymore.”

Erik sighs, making a conscious effort to soften his demeanor for the nervous man. “The others, they’re wrong. No matter what they think he’s done, they’re wrong. If you need him, he’ll find a way to be here. To help. That’s what he does. What he’s always done.”

The man nods, smiling a bit. “Yes. Yes, this is what I believe as well. Will you be bringing him back?”

“No,” Erik says looking around at Charles childhood home that’s been wiped of all traces of him. “No, I don’t think I will.”

* * *

In the end, it’s so easy to find his target Erik has to wonder if the man was even really trying to hide. No one Erik spoke to remembered seeing a bald man in a wheelchair, suggesting the psychic was actively wiping himself from their minds, but he still uses a chair built with metal despite knowing that Erik can sense and discern each and every source of metal for miles around.

He joins his old friend at a table outside of a lovely little café.

 _You’re a sight for sore eyes,_ he thinks loudly and clearly, knowing his friend will hear him.

Charles nods and motions with his head towards the chair across from him.

They play a game of chess, as is their tradition. When it’s over, Charles having bested him again, Erik invites Charles to join him at the commune.

“I want to offer you a home,” he says, “the way you’ve always done for me.”

Charles accepts.

Erik feels a fanciful swirl, a hope, maybe even happiness, that’s been missing for weeks, months, maybe years.

They decide they’ll wait until morning to head out for Genosha. When Erik starts making noise about finding a hotel room, Charles stops him.

“Join me,” he says with a hand on Erik’s wrist.

Erik tilts his head, trying to decide if he felt any sort of mental push. But he’s sure he hadn’t. “Okay.”

That’s how they find themselves on the hotel bed, shoes stowed neatly by the door. Charles’ chair is tucked next to the bed. Erik had offered to mentally roll it out of the way, in a corner perhaps, but Charles declined, preferring to have it where he can get to it in the middle of the night If needed without Erik’s help.

Each man holds a glass tumbler of the expensive scotch Charles prefers. They’ve slowly inched towards each other, Charles reclining at an angle across the mattress. They talk, recalling fonder times until finally, Erik leans forward, slowly, giving Charles time to pull away or object. But he doesn’t.

It’s a temptation that’s always been there, simmering under the surface but unexplored. They always cross paths under dire circumstances that don’t allow for it.

But now? Now they have all the time in the world.

They carry on, firm presses of lips, soft nips of teeth, smooth slides of tongues until finally, Erik wants more. He slides a hand down, curiously, to rub at the front of Charles’ pants. He’s simultaneously surprised and relieved to feel the firm bulge there.

“Yes, it works,” Charles says sardonically.

“I never doubted you,” Erik replies a little less than truthfully.

Although he doesn’t act on it often, Erik prefers to bottom when he sleeps with men, ironically enjoying the feeling of being physically overwhelmed. But in this moment, he has neither the time nor patience to figure out if he could make that work with Xavier. He throws a leg across Charles hips, surging forward to grind against the muscles, thrusting into the friction, all the while devouring Charles’ mouth. Embarrassingly quickly, it’s over. Still gasping for air, Erik shoves a hand down the front of Charles’ pants, gripping him firm and tight, rubbing and pulling, until the man groans loudly, his eyes rolling back, wet, heat spilling across Erik’s hand.

“We didn’t even get our pants off,” Erik points out inanely, pulling a chuckle from Charles.

The drowse of afterglow pulls them into a peaceful sleep.

* * *

The next morning does not feel as calm.

Erik is pulled to wakefulness by the mess in his underwear, equal parts itchy, crusty, and soggy.

He groans, guilt and disgust wrapping their tendrils around him and pulling chokingly tight.

Would he have done this if Raven was still alive?

“You did nothing wrong,” Charles says, voice scratchy with sleep.

But he had. He used Charles, his connection to Raven to make himself feel better.

“It wasn’t right,” Erik replies softly.

Charles groans, bodily shoves himself on to his side. “Erik, I could literally read your mind. I knew exactly what you were thinking the entire time. I didn’t stop you.”

Erik says nothing, wrapping his arms around himself as he carefully keeps his mind blank.

With a soft huff Charles lies back, flat, staring at the ceiling.

“Maybe I needed the closeness, too… Maybe it helped me to connect with the mind of someone who loved her as much as I did. Maybe… If you used me physically… then I used you mentally,” Charles says, his demeanor the same as one confessing a shameful secret, knowing how Erik has always felt about Charles entering his mind, that he specifically wards himself with a helmet to avoid the very possibility.

Erik takes a deep breath, sighs.

“If you’re a sinner, a violator,” Charles says, “then we both are.”

Charles places a soft hand on Erik’s shoulder.

“But truly, I feel like you are muddling what we did. Maybe you wouldn’t have done it if she were still alive, but you’ve thought about it before. I know you have.”

Erik flushes. “That’s very rude of you.”

“It’s harder to keep voices out than the other way around,” Charles says. “Even harder when I agree wholeheartedly with what’s being said.”

Erik clicks his tongue. “So, you’re okay with this? Using her death to explore whatever this is between us?”

Charles’ brow furrows. “No! That’s not what we’re doing. This, whatever this is, has been running between us for decades, but we always pushed it away, too busy trying to ensure our survival. Raven’s… her passing, simply forced us to focus. To stop taking our time together for granted. I mean, am I misunderstanding? Do you… do you truly not feel that way?”

Erik hesitates, trying to examine his thoughts without projecting them. Finally, without answering, he stands and crosses to the bathroom where he carefully washes away all traces of last night, straightens his clothes. Back in the main room, he slips his feet back into his shoes.

Charles has done the same, carefully maneuvering himself off the bed and into his chair, rolling over to grab his own shoes.

Standing by the door, he looks back at Charles, turns to face him and holds out a hand.

“Hi, I’m Erik. I’m naturally suspicious and cynical of everyone and I live in in a weird hippy commune for loner mutants. Would you like to spend a spell with me?”

Charles smiles mischievously and accepts the extended hands. “Charles Xavier. It would be my absolute pleasure.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Charles and Erik engage in sexual behavior. I tried to acknowledge that having one partner who deals with mobility issues may create unique challenges in intimacy. However, I do not have experience with this first-hand in either myself or a partner. I tried to be sensitive and accurate in my descriptions. If I missed the mark PLEASE let me know. PLEASE!


End file.
